Volume 124 Issue 32
kansan.com
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
FORWARD NAMED IN TOP 50
Robinson named to the Wooden Award watch list PAGE 8
'GEARING UP TO HELP YOUTH
University receives $8.96M to work with underpriveleged PAGE 3\
TOUR DE CAMPUS
FRONTLINE FACES
SKYLER RICHARDSON, a junior from Salina, speaks to one of the mothers in the tour group. Skyler has been a Student Ambassador since his freshman year and gives about two tours per week.
TYLER ROSTE/KANSAN
Student Ambassadors help prospective students learn about campus
MARSHALL SCHMIDT
mschmidt@kansan.com
Student Ambassadors, which is composed of 107 undergraduate students, convey their passion for the University of Kansas by giving campus tours, sharing their undergraduate experiences and providing a taste of campus life to high school students interested in attending the university someday.
"Student Ambassadors are the face of the university," said Phil
Bennett, adviser for Student Ambassadors. "Student interaction is what prospective students enjoy the most."
Student Ambassadors began in 1980 and took off in 1986. It serves as the primary recruitment for the University through sharing their experiences by those visiting campus as well as traveling across Kansas to promote the Jayhawk experience.
Feedback from students visiting the University points to
the ambassador tours as the best part of the visit and an influential deciding factor.
Although an advisor, Bennett empowers the ambassadors to run most of the organization, primarily communicating ambassador requests to the group. However, in addition to 10 officers, three student coordinators assist with organizing tours as well as junior and senior days.
serve as two of the three coordinators this year for the ambassadors. Creaden and DeBoer have served as ambassadors since their sophomore and freshman years, respectively and see value in campus tours.
Anna Createn and Josh DeBoer, seniors from Overland Park,
"It gives the prospective student an opportunity to see the campus from a perspective they can relate to," Creaden said.
While any visiting student can
SEE AMBASSADORS 13
University calls to congratulate newly admitted students
MARSHALL SCHMIDT mschmidt@kansan.com
The Office of Admissions is making changes to its strategy to recruit the best and brightest minds in Kansas, the nation, and the world to become Jayhawks. Through coordinating events around the U.S., promoting scholarship opportunities, and facilitating visits for prospective students, the office hopes to attract the next generation of students.
"We are expanding our outreach to students who would be a good fit for the University," said Lisa Pinamonti Kress, the director of admissions, now in her ninth year as director.
While admissions directs its attention to in-state high schools, it's looking to ramp up recruitment out of state. As the rate of graduating high school seniors in Kansas continues to decrease, the University is making an effort to attract students from around the country.
The recent change in scholarship policy, which bases awards on ACT score and GPA, allows greater competition with other universities.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF INSTITUTIONAL PESEARCH AND PLANNING
"Students from out of state find the cost of the University to be affordable and comparable to instate tuition," Kress said.
Out of state students accounted
for 26 percent of first year freshmen and 21 percent of the student body as a whole in the 2010-2011 academic year. The office looked at data to determine recruitment hot spots. Some of these out-of-state regions include Chicago, Texas, Minnesota, St. Louis, Denver, and parts of the Northeast.
Lauren Gaylor, a junior from League City, Texas, has worked for the past year as a telecoun-
This year, the University has adopted a policy to give a congratulatory call to every admitted student, part of the reason why
"We develop a personal relationship and make them feel important," Gaylor said.
selor. She works 15 hours a week during the evenings where she sends out information to prospective students and speaks to them on the phone.
the number of telecounselors increased from just 10 students last year.
"We want next year's freshmen to be so excited they barely make it through their senior year," Gaylor said.
As students, telecounselors can help alleviate concerns associated with making the transition to
SEE ADMISSION 13
the student voice since 1904
RESEARCH
Students find friends easier at large schools
CLAIRE MCINERNY
cmcinerny@kansan.com
As a freshman at Hope College, a school of about 3,000 students in Holland, Mich., Amanda Winkler's friend group was very limited. She spent all of her time with the girls who lived in the hallway of her residence hall, which had only two suites.
"Since it's a small school, it's very much like high school," said Winkler, a sophomore from Chicago in her first semester at the University. "Basically you were friends with who you lived with. That's how everyone was."
The girls quickly formed extremely close friendships through this constant companionship, a predictable outcome according to Chris Crandall, a professor of social psychology.
Crandall, along with Kate Pickett, a KU student, and Angela Bahns, a professor at Wellesley College, just published a study comparing friendships at large universities with those at small universities in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations.
"If there's a large selection of potential friends — a big, diverse group — you are substantially more likely to find someone more similar to you," Crandall said. "So we thought at a big university with tens of thousands of students on campus, a person would be able to find someone very well tailored to their interests."
The three researchers wanted to study the relationships between students in college and whether the size of the university played a role in the quality of friendships. Crandall and his team found that at the University of Kansas, friends tend to be very similar to one another on a variety of things: attitudes, beliefs, politics and prejudices.
Without a lot of potential friends to choose from, students at small universities are almost forced to make do with those around them. "You may be satisfied with your automobile if it's the only one in town, just like friendships," Crandall said. "If there's not a lot of alternatives, people tend to commit to, invest in and be satisfied with their relationships." Although friends at small colleges are not very similar, small-school students said their friendships were closer than those at large schools.
"It's smaller groups and youre not going out all the time meeting new people," Winkler said. "Were all very different but since it's your tight, little group you know everything about everyone in two months."
To conduct the study, Crandall and his team approached students interacting in public places such as the Underground, Wescoe Beach and the Union, and asked the pairs to fill out surveys about their attitudes toward races, social issues and health habits. The survey also asked friends to rate their closeness on a scale of one to seven. Students at Wellesley College completed the same survey to provide the small-school statistics.
Wellesly is an all-girls school with an enrolment of about 2,400 students in Wellesley, Mass.
"The effects are ironic, because you might think 'I will go to KU to have a chance to meet diversity'
COMPARISON OF FRIENDSHIPS IN SMALL AND LARGE SCHOOLS
SOURCE: "SOCIAL ECOLOGY OF SIMILARITY; BIG SCHOOLS, SMALL SCHOOLS AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS"
and what happens instead is your friends are even more similar to you," Crandall said. "There's experience with diversity, but it seems to be at arm's length."
Cory Ingenthron, a junior from Topeka, said he and his roommates, who have lived together for the past three years, are all similar in that they always want to be right when arguing with each other. After living together for so long, the group has developed similar tastes in music and movies.
Whether students have a large or small pool of potential friends to choose from, Crandall said there are a few things that must be present in a friendship.
"If something is important, people will make friends on that basis," Crandall said. "So you and your friends agree on important things, but disagree on unimportant things."
For Jeni Frewin, a junior from Springfield, Mo., said she met her closest friends through a Christian organization called Young Life.
"Our values are all the same so we have that common denominator," Frewin said. "What makes our friendships cool is were all involved in different stuff and we all have different majors but we come together to lead Youne Life."
Crandall said the importance of this study applies to society as a whole and not just college communities. Not only do students gravitate toward people who look, think and behave similar to themselves, but most of the world does as well. Crandall used immigrant communities in large cities as an example, because when people move to foreign countries, neighborhoods often become a slice of their native culture.
Having experienced both friendship styles at Hope College and now at Kansas, Winkler enjoys the larger pool of friends to choose from.
"Here, you can choose your friends," Winkler said. "I've met a lot of people that are more like me and that I'd choose to hang out with. You're going out every weekend with different people and you're meeting new people all the time. You don't spend all your time getting to know one person."
Edited by Laura Nightengale
CLASSIFIEDS 7
CROSSWORD 4
CRYPTOQUIPS 4
OPINION 5
SPORTS 8
SUDOKU 4
All contents, unless stated otherwise. © 2011 The University Daily Kansan
Don't forget
KU alumnus Joshua Charles, who coauthored the book The Original Argument with Glenn Beck, is speaking at 7:30 p.m. in the Kansas Union.
Forecasts done by
University students.
For a more detailed forecast
see page 2A.
HI: 86
L0: 53
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